Monday, July 1, 2013

Book Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles

One
of the cases that prove Sherlock Holmes’s incredible detective skills is The
Hound of the Baskervilles, a supposedly supernatural case about a creature that
hunts the Baskerville family line. The case revolves around the death of Sir
Charles Baskerville, who the client considers to be annihilated by the spectral
hound. Since Sherlock Holmes is a practical thinker, he believes that the case
is not supernatural at all, so, together with Dr. Watson, he tries to dig deep
into the mystery, in search for evidence that the supernatural hound is but the
mere workings of something more logical.

The
complexity of this case is very clear even from the early chapters, as the
detective and his sidekick gain and lose leads. The most interesting part of
this is the idea that not all threads lead to the core of the mystery. Most of
them are just there to create various possibilities for the subject at hand. It
is such a thrill to see how the protagonists analyze whether a thread is
legitimate or just there to create confusion. Add the fact that even legitimate
threads are lost because of the lack of information and details, and the
readers will find themselves in a case that is truly problematic.

The
story becomes more interesting further into the book, as more characters are
introduced and the background of the Baskerville family is even more expanded.
These factors make the case more complicated, but, contradictorily, create a
solid lead, for traces of foul play from not an apparition start to surface.
However, this does not make the case easier at all. If anything, it makes the
case even more difficult, for they would be dealing with not a mindless ghost,
but a cunning criminal.

Overall,
the mystery that drives the story is very effective. Its framework is
complicated enough to create various possibilities that would leave the readers
in conjecture. I can’t help but be amazed by the thought that such a
complicated mystery can be conceived, and what makes it more amazing is the fact
that there is a detective who can solve it using deductive skills that are
beyond ordinary.

About The Author

You can call me Arvin Saints, but that is not my real name. I use that name in all my legitimate social media accounts. It’s not that I don’t want to directly associate myself to the cyber world. The name is simply an inside joke among my compatriots.